State appointee salaries: Who gets what

Posted below is a handy list of some of the state’s various appointive boards and commissions and what their top people earn. I’m posting this since there’s a good possibility that this will become a topic of discussion, debate and perhaps some legislation this year. Last month, I wrote that Gov. Andrew Cuomo had quietly gutted the hefty salaries of several of these board officials through his budget process.

Some of these positions have long been criticized as political patronage plums in which recipients who are loyal campaign foot soldiers or who are relatives to elected officials get high-paying jobs that entail little work or even time in the office.

Working on the “shark tank” theory of the Legislature — once there is blood in the water, everyone gleefully joins the attack — it’s possible that some lawmakers may want to follow Cuomo’s lead or even do him one better by going after more of these jobs and replacing the salaries with per diem payment schedules. (The Civil Service Commission and Liquor Authority were the most recent examples.)

Efforts to further cut or per-diem-ize some of the salaries, though, could get complicated since these boards, offices, commissions, agencies and authorities frequently have people from both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle.